I loaded a 1:20 second Full HD clip into after effects. I need to edit the video based on certain sounds in the video and see if I'm matching them up correctly by previewing it with sound.

The problem is i'm getting frustrated due to After effects not behaving like Premiere. First who thought it was a good idea not to incorporate sound into after effects? Second, I have an i7 sandy bridge processor, and 16 gbs of ram, yet it still takes time to render the ram preview (with no effects on it yet).

So ram preview is my only option for sound, but the problem is every time I hit ram preview it starts the video all the way from the beginning. This is frustrating as I want to start at a specific point. Imagine having a longer video where the editing needs to take place at the end.

There are people out there doing a lot more complicated professional projects, what do you guys do to get around this?

Why can't after effects do some basic things like premiere like render fast with sound? Is it due to Mercury engine and 64 bits?

This is one of the best products on the market, surely there is a better way to do this right?

but the problem is every time I hit ram preview it starts the video all the way from the beginning.

Window --> Preview, enable the "From current time" option

yet it still takes time to render the ram preview (with no effects on it yet).

There is no magic button. If it is compressed, naturally it needs to be decompressed and decoded first. This can consume resources even on fast machines. Furthermore, drive speed matters a lot in such cases. This might actualyl multiply, if you use multiprocessing, so for this kind of simple setup it's usually better to not use it. If your harddrives are fragmented or simply generally slow, frames cannot be loaded as fast and neither will AE be able to use the disk cache. Ergo, convert the footage and move it to the fastest drive in your system.

what do you guys do to get around this?

We preview at reduced compo resolution to extend RAM previews and place markers while the RAM preview plays using the * key on the numpad.

Turning on the Caps Lock key is especially handy: the video doesn't update, and scrubbing becomes MUCH easier. When you find the right place on the audio layer, you can highlight it and hit the * key (numeric keypad) to add a marker. Double-clicking on the marker lets you add text notations.

You might get a better instantaneous RAM preview if you were to disable the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously checkmark in preferences. This way there is no "set up" wait time before the system starts to render RAM preview. You might want to check that option back on before you do your final output render.

Try disabling the "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" option in the Preferences. It will speed up RAM renders as there will be no"set up" time. You will possibly want to re-enable the option before your final output render.